Most of the data used in this report originates from Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Union. The main data sources used are:
The European Union Labour Force Survey (EU LFS) is the EU’s harmonised household survey on labour market participation. While in the early years, it was carried out as an annual survey conducted in the spring quarter in many Member States, it is now a continuous quarterly survey in all EU Member States. If not mentioned otherwise, the results based on the LFS for years before the introduction of the quarterly survey refer to the spring quarter of each year. LFS data covers the population living in private households only (collective households are excluded) and refers to the place of residence (household residence concept). They are broken down by various socio-demographic categories, in particular gender and age. The EU LFS covers all EU Member States as well as Croatia, Iceland, Macedonia and Turkey plus Norway and Switzerland.
A particular data collection connected to the EU LFS is Eurostat’s ‘LFS main indicators’ which present a selection of the main statistics on the labour market. They encompass annual and quarterly indicators of population, activity and inactivity; employment; unemployment; education and training. Those indicators are mainly but not only based on the results of the EU LFS, in few cases integrated with data sources like national accounts employment or registered unemployment. National accounts employment data covers all people employed in resident producer units (domestic concept), including people living in collective households. In the main indicators, these national accounts figures are broken down by sex, working-time status (full-time/part-time) and contract status (permanent/temporary) using LFS distributions. Where available, all key employment indicators in this report are based on the ‘LFS main indicators’.
For the unemployment-related indicators, Eurostat’s series on unemployment comprises yearly averages, quarterly and monthly data. It is based on the (annual and quarterly) EU LFS data and monthly data on unemployment, either from the national LFS or other national sources, mainly unemployment register data. For the compilation of monthly unemployment estimates, these monthly figures from national sources are benchmarked against the quarterly EU LFS data, and they are used to produce provisional unemployment figures for recent months which are not yet covered by quarterly EU LFS results. Unemployment by skills or duration is not available from this data collection.
Most macro-economic indicators are based on Eurostat’s collection of national accounts data according to the European System of National Accounts (ESA95 National Accounts). Data is compiled by the Member States and collected by Eurostat. The collection comprises aggregates such as GDP, from which derived measures such as productivity and real unit labour costs are calculated. In addition, national accounts also cover population and employment data, the latter expressed in persons and in hours worked and also broken down by economic activity, but not by sociodemographic categories.
Forecasts for central economic indicators are produced by the Commission’s Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN) in spring and autumn, covering two years ahead. Physically, data is generally obtained from Eurobase, Eurostat’s online dissemination database, or in specific cases from AMECO, DG ECFIN’s annual macro-economic database. Both databases are open to public access.
Data shown here represents availability and revision status of mid-August 2010.